


Creation of Happy Endings

by letters_of_stars



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 05:36:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6271843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letters_of_stars/pseuds/letters_of_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prompt from tumblr: fakiru + laughing kiss</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creation of Happy Endings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arctic_hare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arctic_hare/gifts).



> this was supposed to be a prompt meme on tumblr that quickly got away from me. i have no other explanation.  
> there isn't really that much kissing for this to be for a kiss meme. oops.

It’s the third time that the ball bounces off the back of his head before Fakir finally loses his patience, which is quite fair, in his opinion. The first time could be attributed as an accident. The second: bad luck. But the third time he finds himself suddenly thrown forward in his seat with the sound of the ball bouncing away across the wooden floor, he’s beginning to get suspicious. He spins around in his chair, trying to avoid spattering ink across the pages of his story, and narrows his eyes at Uzura, who is staring back at him and trying to hold back a laugh as she tries to hide the ball behind her back. “Is this really the sort of game to play _inside_?” It’s perfectly nice outside today, and Fakir can hear children in the street calling to each other as they play. Sure, Uzura might not be quite like the other children, but it’s not like she has any excuse to stay cooped up in here. 

But far from heading obediently for the door, Uzura just exchanges a glance with Ahiru, who is failing even more epically to hold back her giggles, both hands clasped over her mouth. All it takes it Fakir raising one eyebrow and she cracks, turning away and muffling the sound of her laughter in her skirts, like that’s going to help. “Another ten points to Uzura,” she whispers, and that starts them both off giggling, Uzura holding the ball above her head like a trophy while she runs around the table crying, "Zura, zura, zura!" Fakir waits for her to pass by him before grabbing the ball and lifting it. She holds on tenaciously, little legs dangling in the air, until Fakir sighs with a smile and pokes her right where he knows she’s most ticklish. She might be made of wood, but she lets go of the ball immediately and makes a strategic retreat. Fakir hefts the ball in his hand, lines his sight up, and bounces the ball off Ahiru’s back. Not hard enough to hurt—never enough to hurt—but she turns towards him in a mockery of indignation all the same. 

He may have made a mistake. “Whoa, hey, hey, hey…” Fakir holds up his hands in peaceful surrender, but it’s no use. Ahiru nabs the ball from where it’s rolling near the oven and lobs it in his direction. And it would have been a perfect ten-point throw, except he’s not looking away this time. He ducks, and the inkwell goes flying, flooding the table and his parchment. Fakir winces and Ahiru clasps her hands over her mouth, this time in horror. 

“Oh no. Oh no, no, no, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she babbles, running over and using her own skirts to try to mop up the mess. Uzura is there seconds later, dabbing her hands in the ink and Fakir just _knows_  he’s going to find very tiny handprints on the walls later. But Ahiru looks genuinely upset, so Fakir grabs one hand gently around the wrist. 

“It’s okay, calm down.”

“I ruined your story.” She’s all red in the face like she’s about to cry, and Fakir tugs her into his lap and tightens his arms around her waist so she can’t keep cleaning. Uzura, who truly has a child’s approach to her surrogate parents showing affection, makes a face and runs off. Probably to create little tiny handprints. “You can’t read any of it anymore,” Ahiru mutters, nodding towards the ink still spreading across the table and his work. Fakir adds an extra squeeze to his hug and rests his cheek against the back of her neck. Her skirts, which normally reach the ground, are bunched in her fists and stained with ink that probably won’t come out without some godly intervention. 

“I think this should earn you fifty points,” he says quietly, but she doesn’t even smile. Fakir raises one hand and brushes aside the hair on the back of her neck that escaped her braid and presses a gentle kiss there. It’s taken three years, but finally he doesn’t blush like a sunset when kissing her casually like this. He clears his throat, glances across his ruined manuscript, and starts: 

“You didn't ruin it. See? I remember. Once upon a time, there was a prince who lived in castle surrounded by trees. These were not nice trees. The branches were thorny and formed a cage that the prince could not escape. He’d spent his entire life trapped within the castle, but since the castle was all he knew, he never thought to imagine the world beyond what he could see from his window. 

One day, a girl came upon the trees that surrounded the prince’s castle, and wondered what she would find trapped inside. But the trees wouldn’t let her through. She asked them and begged them but the trees just grew closer together and the thorns became spikier. So the girl left. The next day, she came back with an axe. She chopped at the trees but they only toughened their bark. So the girl left. The next day, she came back with matches. She threatened to burn the trees down if they didn’t let her through. So the trees parted, but she was only halfway to the castle when they closed her in and poked at her with their thorns until she promised to leave and never threaten them with fire again. So the girl left.”

Fakir shifts Ahiru in his lap and she falls back more comfortably, curling up her legs and resting her head back against his shoulder. She always loves hearing him tell stories. Even the ones Fakir threatens to burn in the fireplace nearly the instant his quill touches parchment. This had been one of those stories, actually, except he’d started it in the middle of the night so Ahiru wasn’t around for the frustrations of the beginning. The stories he starts in the middle of the night always tend to be that sort, because they almost always come from dreams, and Fakir still struggles to impart the nature of his dreams within his words. 

“Keep going,” she says after a minute, placing her hands on his own where they rest upon her waist. 

Fakir groans and hangs his head. “But that’s as far as I got. I can’t think of an ending.” 

She brightens up immediately. Ahiru loves helping him finish stories. She’s always had a natural talent for it, after all. “Tell me!” 

Fakir straightens up and she twists in his lap, arms around his neck and legs falling to either side of his so they’re practically nose to nose. It gets hard to concentrate with that, every freckle on her face begging for a kiss, so he shuts his eyes and schools his face into a very serious expression. “Ahem. So the girl decided whatever was beyond the trees probably wasn’t that good anyways, and she went in other directions and had many adventures while the prince was trapped forever. The end.” 

She’s protesting before he can even finish and he opens his eyes and laughs at her pout. “What? No good?” She narrows her eyes at him so he starts again. 

“The prince had seen the girl from his window when she was halfway through the trees and wondered what sort of world was out there that the girl might have come from. So he tried to get out the forest himself, but since he’d been in the castle all his life, he was pretty useless and couldn’t do it. The end.” 

She beats one little fist against his chest, but she’s smiling now. “Come on, a real ending! A happy ending!” 

“A happy ending? A happy ending?” He jostles her up and down. “You expect a happy ending when you’re using the back of my head as a target?” 

She giggles and he chuckles, leaning their foreheads together and shutting his eyes once more. He’s been up since his dream woke him, and he’s tired, even if he won’t admit it. “Okay,” he says, “A happy ending.” He hadn’t dreamed of an ending. He’s been trying to think of one ever since Uzura and Ahiru came down at breakfast time. 

“I have an ending,” Ahiru says quite suddenly, and Fakir’s eyes snap open. She smiles and places ink-stained hands on his cheeks. She doesn’t quite have the cadence of a story-teller, but he loves listening to her anyway, whenever she has stories of her own to tell. “Um…so the prince didn’t live alone in his castle. He had servants. And knights.” She nods decisively at the word. She likes knights in her stories. “There was a knight who also looked out the window and wondered what was beyond the trees.”

“This knight was the bravest and handsomest and best at cooking breakfast in the entire country,” Fakir adds, and she laughs. 

“He was okay-looking, and he managed to not burn breakfast about half the time,” she corrects. “But he was _very_  brave.” The way she says it has him turning red, and she knows it. She leans forward and kisses his forehead before continuing. “And _he_  saw the girl while she was trapped in the trees. And he went to the trees and told them to carry a message to the girl." She purses her lips and kicks her legs and Fakir takes the time to brush her bangs out of her face. Maybe later they could go down to the market and buy some flowers. To go with their new ink-stained table. "And the message was for the girl to wait and not forget about the castle, because he would find a way out."

"I'm terrible with directions," Fakir says and she bonks him lightly on the head. 

"Well, good thing I'm talking about a knight in a story and not about you, then. So the knight thought and thought how to get through the trees, but because he was a good knight, he was thinking about how to get everyone from the castle out, and not just himself. And he asked the trees why they kept the castle trapped and they said that once they had been good trees, but saw so much hurt and pain that they grew and grew to keep the prince they loved from ever experiencing that pain. And the knight asked if they would ever let the prince go and the trees said that if the prince was unable to handle the pain of their thorns, he could not handle the pain of the world." 

Her face has got that pensive look on it he never quite knows how to handle, and Fakir knows Ahiru uses stories just as much as he does as a way to cope with what happened to them, even as those events fall further and further into the past. Some things, he knows, you just don't get over. 

"So the knight knew that the trees would never let them through on their own. But he didn't give up, because he was a brave knight."

"And then the girl sent him a message back through the trees," Fakir interrupts. "Telling the knight that she would be waiting when he got out." 

Ahiru nods, and then tilts her head to one side. "What sort of girl was she anyway?" 

"A clumsy one." 

She laughs out loud at that and kisses him, a brief press of lips, before bopping him on the head again. "Maybe she was a princess too!" 

"Okay," he agrees, smile slowly taking control of his face. "She was a princess of the castle too. But when she was just a baby, kind birds came and carried her out and left her in a village. Because birds know about cages, and knew that while the trees meant well, nobody is born to live inside a cage. And back at the castle, the knight realized a way to make the trees lose their thorns and let everyone in the castle free. He put on his cloak and picked up the prince, hiding him inside his cloak so the trees could not scratch at him. And he ran through the trees. The thorns scratched him and scratched him but he didn't stop, even when the pain was overwhelming. And behind him, the trees saw that the prince was unharmed, and they lost they thorns and became normal trees again, and everyone in the palace could walk through them happily. Because the knight knew that the way to survive the pain of this world was to have others to help carry that pain, and the trees had no reason to protect the palace anymore if they knew that lesson as well.

Finally, the knight reached the end of the forest, and drew aside his cloak so the prince could come out and see the world he'd never been able to imagine. And the girl was there..."

"The girl was there," Ahiru says firmly, "And the birds who had saved her came down and told her that she had been a princess of the castle, and she hugged her brother the prince and promised to show him the world. And then she saw the knight, who was bleeding badly..."

"And he  _died_!" Fakir finishes, and she rolls her eyes. 

"No. But he _was_ dying, and the trees saw that. And they also saw how happy the prince was and how the princess had grown up surrounded by love and they grew flowers. And when the knight drank the nectar of the flowers, his wounds were healed, because the trees saw how brave he had been, and wanted to thank him, because now they could be normal trees where squirrels would play and birds would nest and other animals could make homes in. And the prince could see the world and handle the pain of it because he had many people who would help him bear it." 

She stops, and starts playing with her braid. "Is that the end?" Fakir asks, and moves his hands up her waist. She shakes her head, and then slowly leans forward so she can rest her head against his shoulder. One hand comes up to tickle the base of his throat. 

"Who am I in this story?" Fakir asks after a moment, one hand settling at her waist and the other on her shoulder. "Am I one of the trees? I've been a tree. I'm good at it." 

"You were a nice tree though." 

"These trees were nice. They just didn't know the right way to protect someone they loved." 

She sits upright and gives him this  _look_ and Fakir feels the rush of heat back in his cheeks. He wonders how many years it will take for him to get used to that. Maybe never. Maybe he never wants Ahiru to stop knowing him in this way. "Yes, I guess you're right. Maybe you're a tree." She lays her head back down. "The end of the story is that the prince and princess and knight went and saw the world, and helped carry each others' pain, and lived happily ever after." She snuggles closer to his neck and drags his face down with one hand so she can press another brief kiss to his cheek. "The end." 

Fakir smiles. "So...princess..." 

Ahiru sits up and shakes her head back and forth. "Oh no!" 

He raises an eyebrow. "Oh no what?"

She smiles and laughs quietly to herself, before dragging him forward by his shirt and kissing him, this time letting the kiss linger with her chuckle still trapped in between. "You think you get to be a tree in this story and I'm the princess? If you're a tree, then I'm one of the birds who carried the princess to safety. I've been a bird. I'm good at it. So I'm a bird who sees that the trees were really trying to be kind all along, and decides to stay in the forest and help it grow all beautiful with green leaves and flowers." 

Fakir's mouth quirks up in a smile. "And occasionally try to hit the trees with a ball for ten points?" 

"Shush!" she orders him, and presses their noses together, eyes closed. Fakir follows her lead, letting his exhausted eyes slide shut and enjoy the warmth of her body against his. She really does help come up with happy endings. As if she could do anything but. He can feel himself falling into a daze in her arms, before he feels her shift and opens his eyes once more to take in her impish grin.

"Next time I make it twenty."

"Do not," he says, shaking his head with a wry smile, "Let Uzura hear that." 

But the clatter of little wooden feet in the hallway tells him it might already be too late. 


End file.
